Stuck in the Squiggle With You
How Creativity Helps Us Navigate Chaos
Lately, I’ve been feeling like everything is tangled up.
Not just busy or overwhelmed, but existentially scrambled. It feels like the systems around us are glitching, the ground is shifting, and the path ahead has dissolved into static and, honestly, despair.
Between the waves of layoffs, the accelerating emergence of AI and related doomcasting, and the sense that political and societal norms in the U.S. are being systematically dismantled, it’s no wonder so many people I talk to feel completely unmoored.
In many ways, I feel the same.
I’ve had some major life changes lately, the kind that upend your personal world, make you question what life is all about, and force a recalibration.
And yet… I’m not panicking. (Yet, ha.)
That’s not because I know what’s coming. It’s because so much of my career has been spent helping others navigate ambiguity. Any time I have seen people in the midst of chaos, facing professional challenges that felt too big for them? Design thinking helped them forge some kind of path forward. Even it was just a first step.
I’ve learned to trust the design squiggle.
The Design Squiggle, and Why It Matters Now
This visual used in design thinking is called the design squiggle. Created by Damien Newman, it’s a line that begins as a chaotic mess and slowly straightens into clarity. It’s often shown as a metaphor for how we approach complex challenges:
we start in ambiguity, gather insight, reframe, and only then begin to converge toward solutions.
The first time I saw it, I thought: Yes. That’s exactly what it feels like.
But what I didn’t realize back then is that the squiggle isn’t just about design.
It’s about being human in uncertain times.
We all go through squiggles: personally, professionally, collectively.
Right now, it feels like we’re inside one at the scale of an entire society.
The trouble is, we’ve been taught to treat ambiguity as a problem to fix.
We want clarity. A plan. A straight line.
But that’s not how real change works.
Design Thinking. Art Thinking. Thinking Like a Human.
Over the years, I’ve learned to use design thinking, and its messier cousin, art thinking, as tools not just for work, but for life.
Design thinking gives me a structure. A way to frame challenges, explore possibilities, and test ideas with intention.
Art thinking gives me the space to wander. To stay with questions longer than is comfortable. To be in relationship with the unknown.
These aren’t just professional frameworks. They’re emotional survival tools.
They remind me that it’s okay to be lost. That insight often hides in iteration. That the desire for immediate resolution can actually keep us from seeing clearly.
And right now, in the face of global uncertainty, systemic failure, and personal upheaval, that reminder feels particularly essential.
Navigating the Messy Middle
So, what do we do when everything feels squiggly?
We stop trying to outrun the discomfort.
We draw closer to it.
This isn’t about giving up or accepting chaos. It’s about cultivating the creative skills that let us move through it with purpose: pattern recognition, reframing, storytelling, visual thinking, embodied intuition.
If we tidy up the mess too soon, we might miss opportunities to better understand what the mess is trying to show us.
Don’t get me wrong, if I could wave a magic wand and fix what’s broken in the US and the world right now, I would still do it. There is a sense of urgency when so many lives and our entire democracy hang in the process. But this is a set of problems too big to immediately fix, and that magic wand doesn’t exist. So, let’s learn from it. Let’s find the new ways forward, and gain some clarity from the chaos.
Right now, I firmly believe that the world needs people who can sit with complexity and still stay curious. We have to be patient and persistent to navigate this tangle and find a way to the other side.
That’s the quiet, radical power of creativity:
It helps us make meaning before we make decisions.
Try This
If you’re feeling stuck in the chaos (creatively, professionally, or emotionally) try this:
Draw your own squiggle. Start with a scribble, then slowly ease into a straighter line.
Mark where you are right now. No judgment. Just notice.
Name the feeling, not the fix. What is this moment asking you to sit with?
There’s no perfect roadmap. But there is a path, even if it loops a hundred times before you see it clearly.
I really hope we’re not completely broken.
I think we’re just in the middle.
More soon,
Emily
P.S. I’ll be writing more about creativity, uncertainty, and design tools for real life in the coming weeks. If this resonated, please subscribe or reach out. I'd love to hear how you're navigating your squiggle.
Thank you, Emily. I really enjoyed this. I've known of the squiggle for a long time but not heard it talked about quite as you have here. It's a great description of life, now and at other times, personally and professionally.